New Knovel Interface - American Society for Engineering ... · Each Mathcad worksheet (see Example...
Transcript of New Knovel Interface - American Society for Engineering ... · Each Mathcad worksheet (see Example...
AC 2010-1938: NEW KNOVEL INTERFACE
Sasha Gurke, Knovel CorporationSasha Gurke is Sr. Vice President of Knovel Corp. He was one of the co-founders of Knovel in1999, having joined a predecessor company in 1996 as VP Product Development. In this position,Sasha has led the development of Knovel award-winning e-book library, focusing on productdevelopment, functional design, information architecture, search logic and production.
Prior to Knovel, Sasha spent 15 years with Chemical Abstract Service/American ChemicalSociety in Product Development and Editorial.
Sasha is a trained Chemist and Process Engineer with years of industrial and lab experience. Hismajor contribution to Knovel’s success was application of this experience in the development ofinformation products for applied scientists and engineers.
© American Society for Engineering Education, 2010
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New Knovel Interface
Abstract
In the past year Knovel interface has undergone several facelifts and some more serious
changes. This paper discusses user centric approach to design and implementation of new
graphic user interface. New features, including Knovel Lab, Data Search, autocomplete,
spell checker, browse interface, My Knovel and Knovel Math are discussed. Current
work and plans for the future enhancements, including expansion of content coverage, are
discussed as well.
What’s New at Knovel?
First a brief overview of Knovel for those who are not familiar with this award-winning,
Web-based library of e-references (e-books and databases) for applied scientists and
engineers.
Knovel adds value to e-books by making them interactive. Interactive book tools include
tables, graphs and equations. There are several interactive tools, including:
- Graph Digitizer for digitizing graphs displayed as calibrated raster images stored
in Knovel database
- Graph Plotter for plotting graphs using X,Y coordinates stored in Knovel
database
- Equation Plotter for calculating and plotting functions F=Y(X) stored in Knovel
database
- Phase Diagram Viewer for determining phase composition of binary systems by
digitizing diagrams displayed as calibrated raster images stored in Knovel
database
- Excel Spreadsheet for calculating equations programmed in Excel
- Interactive Tables for sorting, filtering, etc. of tabular data stored in Knovel
database
- Knovel Math for calculating equations using PTC’s Mathcad software
Interactivity improves an engineer’s productivity by enhancing searchability and
allowing analysis and manipulation of otherwise static data.
Starting in 2000, we have digitized over 2300 STM titles from over 30 publishers
including industry leaders such as Elsevier, Wiley, McGraw-Hill and Springer, and 25
engineering societies, including ASME, IEEE and SAE. The topics range across 23
subject areas, including chemistry, mechanical engineering, electronics, oil and gas,
sustainable development and construction materials. Many titles, e.g., in the chemical
industry safety area, are unique to Knovel and cannot be found anywhere else.
In 2009, we introduced 3 new subject areas:
Industrial Engineering & Operation Management
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Nanotechnology
Transportation Engineering
with hundreds of new titles in each.
Some Knovel titles are multi-volume publications. The total number of pages in all
Knovel titles, excluding databases, exceeds 1,000,000. The collection is growing at a rate
of 35-40 new titles per month. In 2009 alone, we have added 455 new titles.
Users can browse and simultaneously search all titles via a single interface. Basic and
Fielded (Data) searches are fast and optimized for technical users.
At the end of 2008, Knovel embarked on a new and exciting project: Mathcad-enabling
Knovel content. The product, called Knovel Math, was released last summer and includes
over 4,000 Mathcad worksheets with over 20,000 pages of engineering solutions for
structural and civil engineers.
Below we describe in detail this new product as well as the following new Knovel
Interface features and products released in 2009:
Knovel Lab
My Knovel
Data Search
Search Enhancements
Browse Enhancements
Engineering Cases
Knovel Math
Engineers across all industries perform engineering calculations and document their
design and analysis work. While performing these tasks, they often reference standard
calculations, solutions and other pertinent information from titles such as Roark’s
Formulas for Stress and Strain and (Hicks) Handbook of Civil Engineering Calculations.
Knovel introduced Mathcad-enabled versions of these two leading engineering reference
titles to allow engineers to design and document engineering calculations with increased
efficiency.
Mathcad is a desk-top Computer Aided Design (CAD) platform with calculation,
graphing, text formatting and reporting capabilities and is produced by Parametric
Technology Corp. In Knovel Math, it is seamlessly integrated with standard engineering
content online by transcribing engineering calculations and design examples in the above
titles. Using our precision search tools in an easy to use interface, Knovel search results
identify examples that are fully interactive, integrate directly into Mathcad for easy data
manipulation, and are available in U.S. Customary and Metric units.
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There are several points of access to Mathcad worksheets in the Search and Browse
modes. Users can access the worksheets and the corresponding PDF reports via links in
the original source (see below), or access worksheets from the links in the reports.
Mathcad worksheets and PDF reports along with all the chapters of the books can be also
accessed from the Table of Contents as users browse thought the site. A single click on
the Filter button conveniently exposes all Mathcad links by
expanding the Table of Contents (see below).
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Overall the design of Mathcad-enabled titles follows the standard design of all interactive
content on Knovel. Clicking on a Mathcad link in the Table of Contents opens the
application with the fully parameterized example (see below). To view it, users must
have Mathcad 14.0 or higher installed on their desktops.
Each Mathcad worksheet (see Example 16.2.1 from Roark’s Formulas of Stress and
Strain below) and corresponding PDF report exists in both US Customary and Metric
units for a total of 4 files, i.e., native units (as found in the source document), one
translated units to its counterpart and a PDF rendering of both Mathcad files. To access,
the users must subscribe to the Mathcad-enabled title as it is not part of the standard
Knovel subscription. Mathcad worksheets can be downloaded and modified without any
restrictions. Users can copy and paste desired calculations from Knovel produced
worksheets into their own Mathcad worksheets.
Searchability of Mathcad-enabled content has been enhanced by indexing the keyword
‘mathcad’ for each page of Mathcad content. As a result, users can retrieve this content
very precisely by a Boolean query containing this keyword, e.g., ‘beam bending AND
mathcad’. To further assist users in browsing and searching Mathcad-enabled content,
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each case and example has been labeled with meaningful titles which include
measurement system used.
P
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Currently, Knovel Math content is derived from these 3 important titles:
≠ Roark's Formulas for Stress and Strain (7th
Edition), 2002, McGraw-Hill
≠ Handbook of Civil Engineering Calculations, 1999, McGraw-Hill
≠ Foundation Engineering Handbook - Design and Construction with the 2006
International Building Code, 2007, McGraw-Hill
Future Knovel Math packages will focus on Mechanical, Electrical, Chemical and
Engineering Math. We are currently working on Mathcad enabling venerable Handbook
of Mathematical Functions with Formulas, Graphs, and Mathematical Tables.
Knovel Lab
The release of Knovel Lab in 2009 allowed Knovel to include users in the design process.
Users who sign up for Knovel Lab can see prototypes and new functionality under
development and comment on these, providing valuable feedback to Knovel’s Product
Management and IT teams. Below is Knovel Lab interface with some of the new features
related to My Knovel (see below):
The feedback is optional and provided in the form of a survey.
Knovel Lab and related Design Partner Program showcase new customer-driven
approach to product development at Knovel, that also include focus groups, advisory
boards and independent studies of user experiences aimed at better workflow integration
and usability of the product.
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My Knovel
My Knovel is the most important feature released in 2009. It allows personalization of
Knovel interface. Users can now save multiple search queries, links to the titles and links
to the individual content files in the Aggregated Content folders called My Saved
Searches, My Bookshelf and My Saved Content, respectively. The content files that can
be saved include text in PDF and HTML formats and interactive tables.
My Saved Searches
My Bookshelf
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My Saved Content:
Any item in Aggregated Content folders can be selected to be removed, e-mailed or
moved to a new folder. A click on any item opens this item or executes a query (in the
case of My Saved Searches).
New, custom named folders can be added by using the Add a New Folder feature. Users
can move content from generic Aggregate Content folders to new folders.
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Data Search
Data or Fielded Search has been improved to make it more dynamic and easy to use by
introducing several new features, including field lookup. When users click the Data
Search link on the main toolbar they are taken to this page:
A click in the Field box displays a drop down with classified list of available search
fields. Typing in this box activates the lookup feature and highlights matched character
sting in field names on the drop down list. Then just select the desirable field, operator
and input the value and the unit (for most numeric fields).
To add other search criteria, click on the Plus button designated Add another row as
demonstrated below, select Boolean operator (AND, OR, NOT) and repeat the previous
steps. Then click the Search button.
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Search Enhancements
The following search enhancements have been introduced in the past several months and
available for Basic Search only.
Autocomplete – suggested keywords and keyword terms are displayed as users start to
type in the Basic Search box. The keywords are selected from most frequently used
search terms used on Knovel. Users must click on the displayed term for it to appear in
the box and then click the search button.
Spell Checker – if you made a mistake typing a keyword in the basic search box and run
the search that resulted in no hits, a suggested correct spelling of your keyword could be
displayed. If you are in agreement, select this keyword and the query will be re-run
automatically with selected keyword.
Recent Searches – you recent searches are saved on the pages displayed when you click
on the Recent Searches link located next the Basic Search box. Click on any of the search
queries listed on this page to execute it. You can also add any of these searched to My
Knovel from this page. Clicking on the Clear History button removes all the queries from
this list.
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Some features formally available on Knovel have been restored by popular demand.
These include Search Within – basic search within a title, and Basic Search by the Author
name.
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Browse Enhancements
Browsing experience for the users of Knovel interface has been enhanced in several ways
in 2009. In the browse mode, browsing has been simplified by removing some rarely
used features. The features that stayed include views by Topic, All Titles, New Titles,
and Titles with interactive tools. All these available either classified by Subject (Titles by
Subject view is default), or as an alphabetical listing (Titles A-Z view).
In the search mode, top ranking two titles have an expanded display with up to 10
retrieved sections accessible from the title search results page. This eliminates the need to
click on the title name to display search results on the table of contents page before
displaying the content.
Engineering Cases
The Home for Knovel has been redesigned recently to highlight new products, new
publisher relationships, and new product enhancements (Knovel headlines) and stories
written by engineers in the field (Engineering Cases). Engineering Cases highlight
engineering solutions in a number of subject areas covered by Knovel and intended to
demonstrate the use of information in engineering.
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Current Work and Future Plans
Knovel innovates continuously. Currently, we work on a new feature that would enable
users to cut and paste snippets from text found on Knovel and on the web into My
Knovel. The Product Road Map for 2010 is focused on personalization. Below is a sneak
preview of updates to Knovel interface.
In terms of technology, we’ll be moving away from PDF and toward HTML presentation
of the text.
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Conclusions
In 2009-10, Knovel has embarked on the whole new user-centric approach to interface
and product design. Several tools have been developed to assist in this approach
including Knovel lab. New interface features and products were well received by the
customers. Monthly usage and the number of site visits have increased. Positive user
feedback results in a steady flow of new releases.
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